


Empty Pitcher

by taylor_tut



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Overworking, Parental Avengers, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Avengers, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 18:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16979499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: A birthday request from my tumblr: "I was thinking maybe something where Peter was a little like steve when before the spider bite; all sickly and always in bed and stuff, and then he pushes himself way too hard on a mission with the avengers because he’s finally not so frail, and he kinda just breaks when they tell him to stop being a hero and rest."





	Empty Pitcher

Peter could feel the metal blade slice deeply into his shoulder, sending searing pain through his arm enough that he couldn’t help but cry out. No one seemed to notice, so he merely stumbled back a few steps to collect himself for a moment before lunging once more at the alien drone. The spinning blade was more intimidating than it should be—it looked like a circle saw but it wasn’t quite as sharp. After all, had it been as sharp as the blade that Uncle Ben had used to fix up Peter’s bike after he’d crashed it into a creek trying to jump it years ago, it would have cut his arm right off rather than merely injuring it. Blood was seeping from the wound, but he could feel it healing already.

The second major hit had been his own fault; he’d gotten distracted. He had a particular advantage over the other human Avengers, one that Steve, Bucky, and Bruce all understood quite well—they were more durable than Tony or Clint or Nat. Clint and Natasha merely had to rely upon their own agility to avoid getting killed, and while Tony had the suit, it could only sustain so much damage before the squishy, fleshy human inside got crushed. Peter was a bit more lackadasical about his own protection, so when he heard Clint yelp in response to a surprise attack, he turned to look, leaving himself completely open to attack. In the split second that his attention was drawn elsewhere, the bot lashed out and gave him another, deeper cut on his torso. 

“Spider-kid?” Clint called, close enough to see and hear Peter without needing the comms. “You okay?”

Peter blinked and realized that he was face-up on the pavement. With a groan, he dragged himself to his feet once more, feeling everything spin for a moment.

“I’m great,” he lied, tasting blood in his mouth. Even if it weren’t true right this second, it would be soon enough. Not only was it harder to catch him due to his enhanced reflexes, but it was more difficult to hurt him because of his durability and strength, and even once he’d been injured, the healing factor took care of things pretty fast. 

By the time that the villain was down and Captain Rogers was asking who needed medical assistance, Peter’s gashes had closed and didn’t need attention any longer. Instead of getting the stitches that any other kid would need after the blows he’d taken, he put the suit in his backpack and let the bleach take out bloodstains in the sink while he did his homework. 

For weeks he worked like this. He fought villains after school, did his homework in the evenings, then either patrolled or studied for most of the night. He needed very little sleep and got even less, but his grades held steady even as the bad guys of New York fell night after night. It was working and he was okay. He was always okay.

\----------------------

Tony would later kick himself for not seeing just how much time and effort Peter was putting into being a superhero until the kid came to him in the middle of the night with an enormous rip in the fabric, several more tears clearly having been patched up with a needle and thread. Peter looked exhausted—as he should, considering it was past 2:00 a.m.

“What are you doing up right now, kid?” he asked, taking the suit from Peter and ushering him into a chair. Apparently, Steve and Bruce had been sitting together upstairs and noticed Peter come in, because the elevator doors opened and let them into the lab before Peter could explain himself. 

“Tony, you’ve got Peter coming in at this hour?” Steve asked disapprovingly. “It’s a school night.”

“Mr. Stark didn’t ask me to come here,” Peter defended, saving Tony from having to do it himself. “I was patrolling, and I—”

“You were patrolling this late?” Tony cut him off.

Peter nodded. “I do it every night,’ he said, trying to ignore the horrified faces of the adults in the room. “Anyway, my suit was torn when I got stabbed, so—”

“You got  _ stabbed _ ?” Bruce now interjected, stepping forward to look him over. The suit forgotten, Tony threw it on the table behind him and hovered nervously as Bruce checked Peter for damage. 

“It’s already mostly healed. I just need someone to help me fix the suit, and I figured you’d be up because you never sleep.”

As true as that was, Tony frowned. “Were you planning on sleeping at all tonight?”

“I don’t need much sleep anymore,” he replied vaguely. “I skip it entirely, sometimes.”

“Peter, you’re a growing boy,” Steve scolded. If he weren’t so exhausted, Peter would have laughed about the fact that those were almost the exact words he’d used several times in the puberty video. “You need a full eight hours of sleep a night.”

“Is that what you get, Captain America?”

Steve floundered. “Well, no,” he admitted, “but my physiology is different.”

“So’s mine,” Peter argued, but Tony rolled his eyes.

“But your mind isn’t,” he said. “I mean, it is. But even boy-geniuses need breaks. Your mind needs time to decompress and wind down. You need to rest.”

Tears welled up embarrassingly in Peter’s eyes. He’d heard that so many times before the spider bite. All through his childhood, when he’d gotten sinus infections and colds and asthma attacks, his parents had told him to take it easy, that he couldn’t do what other kids did because he was fragile. Once they’d passed, May and Ben and then just May had always coddled little too much, constantly fearful that he’d make himself sick again and panicking when he did fall ill. The bite had made him stronger. It had taken away the asthma and fortified the weakest parts of his body, and now he had to make up for all the time he’d lost. 

“My limits are way past what they used to be.”

“But they still exist,” Bruce shut him down, releasing his shirt when he was finally satisfied that the cut was only surface-level and that none of his organs had been damaged. “You shouldn’t find your breaking point by pushing yourself over it all the time.”

Tony wore the face of someone who had just been indirectly told that he’d been a terrible role model. Kids were sponges, after all, soaking up everything regardless of whether it was beneficial or not. 

“I just want to be helpful,” Peter finally said in a small, broken voice. Tony wasn’t buying it.

“No,” he objected, “you don’t. You think you NEED to be helpful even if it’s at the expense of yourself. Listen, kid, I know you can do more than you ever could before, but you can’t pour from an empty pitcher. You have to take care of yourself before you can give your time and energy to other people.”

That was it, wasn’t it? Peter now had a pitcher that had doubled in size, whereas before he’d been so tired and ill much of the time that it had rarely even been filled all the way up. Now, he wanted to drain it dry because if he had anything at all left at the end of the day, even just the amount of energy it took to shower and climb in bed and sleep restfully to charge for the next day, it felt like a waste. 

“Finding the balance gets easier,” Steve said earnestly. “And I’ll be happy to mentor you on the things where Tony isn’t an expert.” He flashed a mischevious smile. “Like ‘moderation’ and ‘self-preservation.’” 

Peter’s worried eyes flicked to Tony at the suggestion that he would align so closely with the Captain even knowing their troubled past and rocky present, but Tony nodded in full support. 

“Okay,” he agreed, “that sounds okay.” With that weight finally off his shoulders, he let his eyes close, rubbing his face with his hands exhaustedly. “Because honestly, I’m so, so tired.”

“If you keep going like this, you’ll pass ‘tired’ and head straight for ‘burnout,’ and sometimes there’s no coming back from that,” Bruce explained. 

“Go home and get some rest,” Tony commanded gently. “I’ll drive you. I’m giving you the week off, too, so just focus on getting some rest and peace of mind. Spend some time with your Aunt, or maybe your friends. I’m sure they all miss you.”

Peter nodded, allowing himself to be ushered to the car by all three of them. He slept through the car ride home and didn’t even realize that Tony had taken his suit (more than likely to fix it) until he had brushed his teeth and gotten into bed, but he was tired enough that he didn’t care. Plus, if Tony and the others said that they’d handle things while he slept for a while, he trusted them. He had to.


End file.
